Reconciliation with God.
These words may have—
I. A NATIONAL FULFILMENT. The Jews might have taken these words into their lips after the discomfiture of Sennacherib, or, with fuller meaning later on, after the return from captivity and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 6:15, Nehemiah 6:16). Other nations, after retributive sufferings and signal deliverances or restorations, may appropriately use this reverent language.
II. THE FULFILMENT IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF MANY AN INDIVIDUAL LIFE.
1. There is spiritual declension. A man has been living professedly in the service of God, but his devotion has been dying down, his obedience has been growing lax, his usefulness has been diminishing and may have come down to nothing.
2. Then comes Divine correction. God speaks to him in chastening love; he sends the affliction that is intended to awaken him from his half-heartedness in the service and cause of Christ.
3. Then comes conviction and amendment on his part; a return to the higher and worthier life he lived before.
4. And then the chastisement is removed. (Psalms 103:8, Psalms 103:9.) God's anger is visibly, sensibly, consciously "turned away;" the heavenly Father "comforts" him with his loving favor; and there follows:
5. The grateful and joyous song of praise.
III. THEIR FULFILMENT IN THE EXPERIENCE OF EVERY GOOD MAN. In the case of every one who enters into the full heritage of those Messianic blessings which are the subject of prophecy in this chapter, there will be found:
1. A sense of Divine displeasure; reason enough for saying, "O Lord, thou art angry with me." The word "anger' in its honorable sense is certainly referable to the Divine mind. We are not to identify the faulty irritation of which we are too often conscious with the "anger" which is here and elsewhere applied to the Supreme. That feeling, at once holy and painful, which a faithful father feels towards his son when he has done something which is shamefully wrong, is the feeling, deepened, refined, ennobled by divinity, which the heavenly Father and righteous Ruler feels toward us when we sin against him and against his holy Law. We may call it by that name which is most significant or appropriate to our own thought, but, however it may be denoted, it becomes us to recognize the fact, to be affected and to be afflicted by the fact, that God, the holy and loving One, feels towards those who have willfully broken his laws or who deliberately reject his overtures of mercy, a serious Divine displeasure. He is pained, grieved, angry. He blames us, he condemns us, he holds us to be deserving of retribution.
2. The removal of God's wrath. Two things are needed for this:
the turning of the heart, and therefore of the life, from selfishness and sin; and the cordial acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Propitiation for our sin and the Sovereign of our soul. Without these we have no right to look for the turning away of God's anger; with these we may be perfectly assured of it.
3. An abiding sense of the Divine favor. "Thou comfortedst me." God's "comfort" is not always simultaneous with the exercise of his mercy; there may be an interval of no short duration between the act of Divine forgiveness and that blessed sense of reconciliation which we call "assurance of salvation" (Psalms 32:1, Psalms 32:2, Psalms 32:7, Psalms 32:11). Let no one despond because he does not find himself possessed of inward peace and sacred joy as soon as his heart turns to God and to his salvation. Let such a one continue to ask, to seek, to trust, to hope, and in due time the light will shine into the soul. It does not always come as the lightning-flash—one moment the blackness of darkness and the next a dazzling light—but often as comes the returning day; first a few streaks of morning, then the darkness turning into gray, then the deepening light as the hours advance, at length the full brilliancy of noon.
4. A life of songful gratitude. "At that day," and through all remaining days, until the night of death shall usher in the endless morning of immortality, the comforted heart will say, "O Lord, I will praise thee."—C.